Eight photos showing a US in crisis
Bungalow Family with Last Ash Tree, Midway, Chicago, USA, 2018 (Credit: Paul D’Amato)
The 1969 America in Crisis book opened with a section called The American Dream, devoted to photographs of the US as it has traditionally portrayed itself: a land of plenty and opportunity, of cowboys and cookouts and white picket fences. As the book went on to show, it was an ideal that often failed to match reality.
Nonetheless, Paul D’Amato’s photograph, captured in the hugely diverse Chicago suburb of Midway, shows hints of that promise. A Latino family sit beneath a tree on the manicured front lawn of their home; a man throws a toddler into the air; an older girl stands next to her mother. The sky is clear, the evening light inviting and warm. Though they don’t seem to be rich, they’re clearly doing well, part of America’s expanding Hispanic middle class. “The American Dream is not how it looked in the 1960s, especially as portrayed in the popular media,” says Harris. “This is another way of showing what it looks like now.”
The only note of disquiet is the expression on the face of the man at the centre of the image, who’s looking warily into D’Amato’s lens. Is he hostile because we’re intruding on this bucolic family scene, or anxious that it might somehow all disappear? Is he living the Dream, in other words, or still struggling to attain it? “There are so many different narratives going on,” says Harris. “It’s kind of up to us which we choose.”
America in Crisis is at the Saatchi Gallery, London, until 3 April 2022.
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